Why you shouldn't kill people

I read “Crime & Punishment” and now I know more than ever.

I’ve never had the faintest plans to kill someone with an axe. When I lived in a mouse-infested apartment, I was scared to kill the mice indirectly, with traps.

“You can see their eyes!” I said to anyone who would listen, including my landlord. “How can you kill something after making eye contact with it?”

I can basically only kill bugs. But this is not a sign I’m a “good person” necessarily.

In an interview I read recently, Ocean Vuong (poet and novelist) recalled a time when he was 15 and really wanted to kill a guy for stealing his bike. Ocean asked his friend, Big Joe, if he could borrow his gun, and Big Joe said no.

“What was so touching to me is that I was not responsible for that,” Ocean says. “Someone else’s better sense saved me.”

I think Ocean gives himself too little credit there. I bet without Big Joe’s intervention, he still would have chickened out before fully murdering. He hasn’t killed anyone since and cries when he talks about this incident.

Still, I was also very struck by what a great thing Big Joe did, protecting 15-year-old Ocean from probably the most unwise and intense impulse of his life.

For most of my life, I haven’t been equipped to do that! I don’t have a gun to not-give anyone, and I didn’t have much to say to someone considering murder besides “What?” and “People have eyes!!!”

But after reading Crime & Punishment, I feel like I have a lot to say to someone considering murder.

Why Crime & Punishment was educational in ~100 words

If you haven’t read, Crime and Punishment is about Raskolnikov, a somewhat (???) normal guy who axe-murders a pawnbroker and her sister. This is early in the novel! Then he just kinda stews in the emotional and logistical fallout of that for hundreds of pages, with cameos from friends, family, and very chill and giggly law enforcement professionals.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the axe murder suckssssss for Raskolnikov. He gets a few waves of euphoric “I got away with it!” feeling, but he is overall freaked out and literally sickened by what he did.

Murder: It’s bad for the perpetrators, too! And you really see that up close in this book.

11 reasons not to murder people, according to Dostoevsky x me

1. You might just need some fresh air. And isn’t that more fun and easy than murdering? It’s crazy how repeatedly different figures in Crime & Punishment, including the omniscient narrator, attribute Raskolnikov’s decisions and mental state to his cramped little rented room (which he never pays rent for so… stolen room?). Visitors keep stopping by and confusing his room with a cupboard or a hole. Just a little Friends-style running gag throughout the book. But seriously, a major message of Crime & Punishment is to go for a walk! Get a bigger house! Environment and ventilation is key to obeying the law.

2. Murder is bad, and you’re not a special exception. Raskolnikov has this creepy ubermensch theory that he is like Napoleon, one of the men who has some vague cosmic license to kill people because he’s a creator of history. (Remember he’s only SOMEWHAT normal.) This theory sucks! Napoleon had a “license” to kill, to the extent he did, because a huge nation/army of people felt like he was killing on their behalf. He also risked his own death by killing people in what was widely understood as WAR. Raskolnikov is not living like this. His murder is a solo surprise attack on his pawnbroker, who he axes from behind during what she understands as a work visit. Raskolnikov trying to feel like Napoleon by killing a lady reminds me of something I did when I was a kid: I’d try to eat my last piece of French toast FIRST, because the last piece always made me full, so could I get immediately, magically full by eating it first? No. Context matters.

3. Circumstances change! Raskolnikov feels he “has” to kill the pawnbroker so he can rob her and give his sister money, while protecting the pawnbroker’s sister from (alleged) physical abuse. But shortly after the murder, other financial resources for his sister emerge, and he never gives her any money. Plus he kills the pawnbroker’s sister when she catches him mid-murder. Raskolnikov is a fake friend to sisters!

4. Murder is DISGUSTING. I honestly feel like Dostoevsky murdered someone IRL because he gives so much detail.

5. Murder logistics are really stressful. Getting to and from the murder is a nightmare. Raskolnikov is very uncertain about whether there’s blood on his clothes that he hasn’t spotted; whether he actually fully killed the pawnbroker; whether he is successfully concealing his axe in his jacket; whether he has been spotted going down the stairs post-murder; and MUCH more.

6. Goals change! After the murder, Raskolnikov almost forgets to rob the pawnbroker, and never figures out whether what he stole was valuable. He wanted money going in, but going out, he has a new goal absorbing all his attention: getting away with murder! Even if (BIG IF!) murder solves a problem, it creates a huge new legal problem that swallows his life.

7. It’s hard to act normal after you kill someone. Not that Raskolnikov is the king of acting or normalcy, but he has trouble controlling his affect in the aftermath—lots of giggling and rage and heart palpitations. He also has a remorseful fever for like 90% of the book. He has a really strong, physical reaction to murdering.

8. Murder is a huge secret that isolates you. Raskolnikov sees his mom after the murder, and has this realization that he can never be truly honest with anyone again (unless he confesses and goes to Siberian prison camp). It’s really sad! I cried at this part because I would hate it even more than him. I love to be EXCESSIVELY HONEST with people who are barely asking me anything.

9. Confessing to murder is no fun, either. Raskolnikov really wants to talk about his murder experience, so he confesses to Sonia, his friend’s daughter. He feels clear to tell her because she’s a sex worker, therefore just as bad as him (in his eyes) (not in mine, Sonia is way cooler). This puts her in a terrible position, where she has to narc on Raskolnikov, who she has an ultra-Christian crush on, or become complicit in this murder. She navigates it AMAZINGLY, but that doesn’t mean it was kind or appropriate of him to share. The pawnbroker’s sister was Sonia’s Bible study friend! Not cool.

10. Murder makes it hard to be present. Raskolnikov is often flashing back to the murder and literally returning to the scene of the crime, or planning one million defensive steps ahead because a guy in the street looked at him sideways. (No one understands “I Think He Knows” like Raskolnikov!) This means he can’t feel feelings about his life as it happens — he’s so guilty and anxious his whole emotional fusebox is blown. It takes him like 7 years to notice he’s in love! Talk about a slow burn.

11. You’re never sure you got away with it. Raskolnikov is trying so hard not to go to jail, but as long as he’s alive, he could go. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. The uncertainty hangs over him forever. Most people (myself included) can barely tolerate that scale of uncertainty for 10 minutes, let alone for life!

These are just some of the discouraging thoughts I would share with someone considering murder, though maybe in a less peppy tone and a less BuzzFeedified format.

Obviously I think a lot of people would instead RUN from someone considering murder, which is healthy. But the amazing thing about Crime & Punishment is that it made me more strongly against murder than I already was, but it also made me root for Raskolnikov and see his good traits and want to talk to him, ideally before the murder, but after would work too.

As my dad said about Raskolnikov, sort of hilariously: “He’s trying to be a good person!”

But I agree. The “trying” in “trying to be a good person” and the “somewhat” in “somewhat normal person” — two of the hardest working words in history.

Bonus: Meet an unforgettable dream baby (pejorative)

There is a wild passage at the end of Crime & Punishment where a side character (I won’t say which one!) sees a child, realizes he’s dreaming, wakes up, and kills himself. The flow of causality is NOT CLEARER in the book than it is here.

But let us look at how Dostoevsky describes this man’s encounter with the child:

He raised the blanket carefully. The child was sleeping soundly, she had got warm under the blanket, and her pale cheeks were flushed. But strange to say that flush seemed brighter and coarser than the rosy cheeks of childhood. “It’s a flush of fever,” thought [anon guy, no spoilers]. It was like the flush from drinking, as though she had been given a full glass to drink. Her crimson lips were hot and glowing. He suddenly fancied that her long black eyelashes were quivering, as though the lids were opening and a sly crafty eye peeped out with an unchildlike wink, as though the little girl were not asleep but pretending. Yes, it was so. Her lips parted in a smile… now it was a grin, a broad grin; there was something shameless, provocative in that quite childish face; it was depravity, it was the face of a harlot, the shameless face of a French harlot… “Accursed child!” [he] cried, raising his hand to strike her, but at that moment he woke up.

UM?! As Taylor Swift would say, “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby.” But this is more goth because the guy truly (in his dream) feels the baby is drunk and coming on to him and that he needs to HIT her.

I sort of love it — I think he’s realizing the problem is his worldview, not the sluttiness of the baby — but I can’t believe most people read this book in high school. I was barely old enough to read it just now.

Q for readers

Any reasons not to kill people that I left out?

Linxxx

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